I'm watching Stand Up Guys as I post. When I started, Al Pacino was dancing. Now they just stole a car. It's a good movie, I'm enjoying it. If you're tracking the time, you'll note that I've spent a lot of time between sentences. I've spent a lot more reading. Minutes pass, I rad a sentence here, I read a sentence there. I click a thing and more minutes have passed. I'm giving 90% of my focus to the movie. In bits and pieces, I read and write. My wife says something, and we pause the movie and talk.
Screen 1 is the movie on my computer. Screen 2 is slashdot. Screen three is the occasional attention to my phone. My computer. My monitors. My phone. They are my things and they display what I want, when I want, in the way I want. I control the media. I am not controlled by the media.
Priorities. Wife: 100%. Movie: 80%. Slashdot: 10%. Phone 1%. That's not a mathmatical equation, it's a priority breakdown. The grand thing about our modern age is that I can consume information on my terms, the way I decide to, rather than how it is fed to me. It's time to pause, feed the dog, and talk a little. The amazing thing is that it is all in my control, and it's not a bad thing, rather it is glorious.
And to all the people who think you should consume as you're fed: sorry, that world where you must do as you're told has passed. I read, I write, I watch, I converse... all on my own schedule, all in my own hands as I determine, as I prefer. I love books and often read for hours without distraction. Sometimes I play music as I read. Sometimes I read as I wait for important interruptions.
The great revolution of my generation is to change the focus from one where you watch TV as you are fed TV back to one where you read the book when you feel like reading the book. Only now it applies to so much more than books.